The Good Earth

A year later, Louisville, Kentucky-based Brown-Forman purchased Fetzer (adding the winery to its existing brands including Jack Daniel's, Southern Comfort, and Finlandia Vodka), and named Dolan president of Fetzer. One of his first decisions was to commit to going 100% organic by 2010. All the grapes on Fetzer-owned land--about 20% of the total--are already organic. Without chemicals to fertilize the grape crop and keep insects and fungi away, growers had to learn different ways to address these same problems. They undertook what was then a fairly unusual practice of growing "cover crops," which have since become standard at wineries around the world. In the aisles between the vines as well as in fallow fields, growers plant different crops to crowd out weeds, repel bugs, and provide soil nutrients. If diseases persist, growers have other remedies, such as sprinkling sulphur dust and copper sulfates (which are approved for organic use) on the roots of vines and spraying assorted oils on the grapes to keep away pests and fungi.

Dolan is a fourth-generation wine maker who grew up steeped in the wine country's culture. His organic conversion led him to believe that protecting the environment meant more than simply growing grapes without chemicals. It meant improving the environment for workers and investing in their skills and futures. It meant reducing emissions from farm vehicles and figuring out how to eliminate solid waste at the winery. And it meant making enough money so that Fetzer could serve as an industry example of how to do things differently. Fetzer employees named this vision E3, which stands for economics, environment, and equity, or the triple bottom line. Every decision at the company is put to the E3 test: Does it support fair and safe standards for employees? Does it protect or improve the environment? Does it make economic sense?

The Dirt Building and the Whopper Tractors

At Fetzer, evidence of Dolan's E3 conversion is everywhere. There is, for example, the dirt building. Fetzer's offices are housed in a 10,000-square-foot mossy-brown structure. It's textured, like stucco but softer, with wispy fibers that you can see if you lean in and look closely. It is, in fact, created out of pressurized layers of dirt--a material called PISÉ , or pneumatically impacted stabilized earth. The interior support beams are made of remilled, recycled wood from barns around the Fetzer properties, and solar power is the primary energy source for the building.

The PISÉ office building is the perfect example of a project that sounds idealistic and impractical. Dolan says it's anything but. "You just include sustainable practices in the decisions that you would have to make anyway. We needed offices. We were going to build a building anyway. Recycled wood is more expensive. Solar panels are very expensive. At one point, we were looking at a $200,000 cost overrun," he says. The solution? "We made the building smaller. And we added the solar panels later, when we found some more money."

Fetzer also runs its entire fleet of tractors and big-rig trucks using biodiesel fuel--which is made from soybean oils and repurposed cooking oil collected from local fast-food restaurants--mixed in with regular diesel. "When we first started using it, the vineyard smelled like Whoppers," remembers Tom Piper, director of vineyard operations at the winery. "It used to make us all hungry."

Fetzer has also broken ground with its labor policies and employee benefits. Many full-time vineyard workers have housing on the property, and the winery is currently building more housing for seasonal employees. "When we started asking for employee input, we learned that our pay was really low here," Dolan says. "And people needed better benefits. They particularly wanted preventative immunizations for their kids." Fetzer started covering vaccines for children and raised its wages to bring them in line with local averages.

Dolan highlights the English-language classes that Fetzer provides to employees free of charge. "Many of our workers are from Mexico, and they don't have the language skills. We believe that everyone should be able to fully participate in the community," he says. Dolan's director of facilities management, Guy Goodacre, puts it more pragmatically. "Those English lessons pay for themselves when a guy understands his supervisor and doesn't pump cabernet into a 3,000-gallon chardonnay tank. That happened to us. It was 140,000 bottles of wine that turned into pink chardonnay."

"No Margin, No Mission."

To fund these projects in environmental and social equity, Dolan faces the never-ending need to perform. Many of his initiatives were started during the high-growth 1990s. His challenge is to maintain them now that the global wine industry is under tremendous competitive pressure. Dolan insists that now is the time to dig in and recommit to the E3 principles. "This is a good time to press our organic transition with outside growers. With the incredible oversupply of grapes, growers are open to anything to make their product more attractive," he says.